


Relativity

by War_Lioness



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:29:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/War_Lioness/pseuds/War_Lioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Tumblr Mass Effect Holiday Gift Exchange for Tsukahime.</p><p>In the space between heartbeats, Garrus Vakarian reviews the path that brought him to this moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relativity

> _“It is a curious side effect of general relativity that an observer at the top of a tower will note that the motion of a clock at the bottom of the tower seems to be moving more slowly than a clock at his level. This indicates that the nearer something is to a gravitational body the slower it runs.”_
> 
> – Gaius Brutus, “ _The Cipritine Problem: General Relativity and How it Affects FTL Travel_ ”, 325 BCE
> 
>  

My ears rang from explosions and my left leg wouldn’t bear weight, but none of that mattered when I looked into your eyes. I poured my heart into that look, hoping you would see what you meant to me.

“Shepard, I …”

Time slowed, stopped.

When I saw you for the first time, marching up the steps to the council chamber with that incredibly mobile human face schooled into a mask of determination, I knew your star was on the rise. I’d heard about Nihlus. Hell, we’d all heard about what happened on Eden Prime; the council was about as secure as a sieve with secrets like that. But there was something about you.

Then, against all odds, you took me with you. And I learned. Everything Father had been trying to pound into my head since before I could remember. I’m not a very good turian. You made me want to be better.

It all disappeared in a beam of light and a gasp of air.

The funeral was hell. An empty casket – too light to be real – and those endless speeches. Each one droned on, putting you on the highest pedestal they could find. The first human Spectre, they repeated, and a hero. But you were more than that. A hero, but still a person, the same as anybody else.

Alenko quoted some human philosopher once. About how some people are born great and others have greatness thrust upon them. That was the Shepard I knew, doing the best with what you had and coming out on top every time – except this one.

I thought of how, when I first saw you on Omega, I thought the stims had finally affected my brain. I was hallucinating my old commander as I gasped out my last breath on that apartment floor.

Oh, but it wasn’t a hallucination. You were real and warm. I woke in the medbay. My face ached and my thoughts blurred with exhaustion. But I had to see you, touch you. Make sure you were real.

And you were.

The first time I thought of you outside the realm of friend and mentor I was shocked at you for suggesting it and myself for honestly considering it. We’d just finished the business with Sidonis. I told you that stupid story about the recon scout. Your eyes shone like grey jewels and you laughed at me. Then you left me gasping with that one direct remark. Skip straight to the tie-breaker. But the more I thought about it, the longer I played with the possibility, the more it appealed.

And so, in the frantic hours before the Omega 4 Relay jump we came together.

I remember how nervous I was that first time; the near-crippling fear that, somehow, I would manage to screw it all up. Oh, but I didn’t. And what we had between that night and Aratoht was … indescribable.

I wanted to stay with you, return to Earth with you and Joker and the Normandy. But you wouldn’t allow it. You told me that someone had to stay out of jail and do as much as could be done to prepare the galaxy for what was coming.

So I worked. For the next six months I worked and fought and argued to make sure the headstart you bought with 300,000 batarian lives wasn’t thrown away.

Then the Reapers hit. Swarming in from the relay like a plague from Ashley’s religious text and I sent up a single prayer to the spirits that you’d gotten away. After that, it was dust and mud and too few heatsinks against beings that shrugged off our weapons fire like water. And it was worse than nothing. At night, on those rare occasions when we were in a secure enough location to allow sleep, we would talk, of all the things we were fighting for.

I kept silent. I wanted to keep you to myself. My secret. Besides, some of them may have had more recent information than I did. My info was good, but there was always a chance …

Then, like dawn on the solstice, there you were, shining, and brilliant. You replaced the energy that had drained out of me in slow drips every hour since the Reapers landed. I knew, _knew_ , that with you there, and me by your side, we could conquer anything. They were dead already, they just didn’t know it yet.

On top of the Presidium, I may as well have been invincible. You wanted me. You wanted _me_. Nothing else in the world mattered in that moment. Not the friends we had lost or would lose, not the Reapers, not the war. Nothing existed besides the woman in my arms with smiling grey eyes and the grace to let me win.  We would be together, always.

But now, I can’t be there and it is destroying me. You can’t face this alone. Please, let me be there. Let me take that kill shot.

There’s no Vakarian without Shepard.

“… love you, too.”


End file.
